Chez Moi

I started re-reading my battered copy of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince for the nth time yesterday. Yes, I am one of those sad ‘adults’ who reads Harry Potter for pleasure. But I feel that the magic of J K Rowling (pardon the pun!) has been slipping for a while now. She hit top form with Goblet of Fire. With Order of Phoenix she seemed to have fine-tuned the art of waffling. HBP - well, I have to say, was a huge disappointment of mammoth proportions. Agreeably, the subtle nuances of the story hasn’t penetrated my think skull yet but I am yet to see the sanity in killing Dumbledore off.

But as I delved deeper and deeper into Pensieve and saw Tom Riddle as he slowly metamorphosed into Lord Voldemort, I couldn’t help thinking how similar this was to Anakin Skywalker as he slowly walked down the Sith way of life. They were both young enough when they changed from what they were into the extremely powerful beings they end up being.

But therein ends the similarity. While Tom Riddle seems to have been bent on turning Dark (was he ever a good wizard?), Anakin didn’t start out liking the Dark side. Tom didn’t believe in what Dumbledore calls ‘the oldest kind of magic’ - in fact, he scoffs at it. On the other hand, it is love that makes Anakin Skywalker let in fear and fear is the first step towards the Dark side.

Tom Riddle is the quintessential leader; he doesn’t let anyone tell him what to do nor does he let anyone in too close to him. Anakin Skywalker, on the other hand, is easily influenced - first by his master, Obi-wan Kenobi and later by Senator Palpatine. This continues to the very end, until young Luke Skywalker comes in and breaks the link.

So, is Anakin weaker because he let in love, therein fear, which ultimately caused his downfall? Is this not against Dumbledore’s tenet that love is the greatest magic of all? When you look at it, Lord Voldemort seems lot more competant and together than Anakin Skywalker, who seems more a mass of confusions, fear and hate.

But who really is the stronger, meaner and ultimately powerful of the two - Lord Voldemort or Darth Vader? You decide!

Can also be found at Desicritics

Some of my most favourite songs in Indian movies are those from the Tamil movie ‘Alaipayuthey’ (Saathiya was a very diluted effort in Hindi, IMHO). A R Rahman’s music was fabulous, as always, as he elevated even the wedding mantras that are oft repeated by the purohits in a bored monotone, to the heights of cooldom, with his ‘Mangalyam’ number.

But today, as I was listening to it while washing the dishes, I couldn’t help but wonder about the whys and wherefores of the lyrics. The ‘hero’ character sings about his beloved in such poetical and glowing terms that it is guaranteed to make the knees of any desi girl go weak. It is either ‘endless smiles forever, I was born a hundred times just for this day’ or the ‘love kabaddi’ (a la ‘Shikdum’!) where the girl is to taunt and tease him with her various antics. There is also this evergreen song where he compares every single colour in the spectrum to his lady love.

All this is great, just dandy. What I do not understand is, what is the inspiration for all this? These big-time declarations of ‘luurve’ that are nowhere to be found in our society. All these men who woo their dilbaras, whatever happens to them once the objective has been reached? Boys who supposedly chased the girls till she gave in seem to give up on them once the mangalsutra is on her neck. I have never seen a husband voluntarily hold his wife’s hands, especially in front of family. In fact, the norm is pretty much to pretend that you don’t really know each other all that well. Why? Ma won’t be happy, will she?

My friend recently forwarded a ‘joke’ to me about the difference in a romance at various points in life - 6 weeks, 6 months, 6 years. The change, of course, is quite dramatic, from ‘Hi honey‘ of 6 weeks to ‘hey you!‘ of 6 years!! What a shame!

Last night, I watched this Telugu blockbuster ‘Nuvvostanante Nennodantana‘, starring RDB’s Karan Singhania, Siddharth, in the main role. The things he does to win the girl’s hand is unbelievable. This boy, a rich NRI kid from London, chucks everything away and settles down in his sweetheart’s village, where he suffers untold agonies in the form of eating really, horribly spicy food (he is afterall, an NRI yaar, go easy on him!), cleans the cow sheds, milks the cow and gets doused with its wee while he’s at it - and the list continues. As I saw himtry to catch a good night’s sleep on the hard ground, my heart bled for this young man who so carelessly gave up his Down-stuffed Silent Night mattress.

Okay, okay I know movies and reality can and should never be clubbed together even in the same sentence. But the moviemakers cannot be extrapolating things to such a degree that the result is a 180 degree ulta of real life, can they? Not to a nation where the menfolk aren’t exactly pampering their wives silly by getting them flowers everyday and romancing the be-jesus out of them?

So why are our lyricists and movie makers still feeding the poor girls of today such overwhelmingly beautiful scenarios wherein the man of their dreams will woo them to the ends of the world? Aren’t they setting everyone up for a rather steep fall?

Or is it just my cynical self coming to the fore?

PS: Can I just say this isn’t an attack on the desi men around the world so please do not slag me off too much. I just would like to understand the fundas of the masala we are fed on a daily basis, that’s all!

Also available at http://desicritics.org/2006/05/18/143846.php